Assignment 2: Still life with watercolour

Still life started off with tulips , tomatoes and pears but switched to limes that were a more vibrant green, felt they would contrast better with the tomatoes.


Preliminary sketches:

Colour studies:

Final painting:

Second attempt at a still life not entirely happy with the vase in the first painting above, too many linear marks used to define it, softening the marks hasn't helped. Also thinking that we have colour from both the tulips and the tomatoes... perhaps the composition could be improved by reducing the splash of colour to one item.

For the second version I was able to find a plant, Dragon Tree Golden Coast, that was well within my still life props budget. The leafs of the plant matched with the colours of the limes and they also do a better job of filling the top have of the paper than the bunched up tulips. I placed the still life on a stall so that my vantage point was slightly higher, than that of the first picture which meant the depth between the plant leafs and the objects on the stall seat was reduced helping to unite all the objects.

Portrait studies 7

Coloured Paper and Gouache

In the following studies I have used watercolours over coloured paper that has been covered with a light wash of white gouache. I read about this technique in an article about the work of artist Jane Corsellis (Watercolor August 2010).  The gouache has a chalky quality that depending on how vigorously the brush is used can be mixed with the watercolour giving it a milky opaque quality, in the initial attempts I found this technique worked well when painting the sky.